Cloning people

Hugh McLachlan is onto something when he says opposition to human cloning is illogical (21 July, p 20). He takes a step too far, however, in asserting that "in a free society, actions should be legal unless there is a case for making them illegal".

The effective use of laws is much more problematic than that bald statement might suggest. They are more than mere algorithms putting into effect the dictates of pure logic: all laws are statements of human relationships, and have no meaning outside that context. And "relationship", on a broad level, amounts to culture.

It is entirely possible for laws to lag behind, or overreach themselves beyond, what a culture is prepared to accept, whether or not the disjunction between them and the realities of human fears and aspirations makes logical sense. The long and tedious path of disseminating accurate information, of teaching people how to ...

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